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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26704945">The "Oh" Realization</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Millberry_5/pseuds/Millberry_5'>Millberry_5</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Clown Corps</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Also I'm making this ship name McBout and you can't stop me, Character Study, F/M, Feelings Realization, I will make this big top of a fandom with my own two hands if I have to, Introspection, Realization</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 06:14:00</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>930</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26704945</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Millberry_5/pseuds/Millberry_5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Bout reflects one night, when it's too hot to go to sleep yet. He pays attention to what's inside of him.  He realizes something.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Bout/Mary McBell</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The "Oh" Realization</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>If you clicked on this because you follow me/my work instead of looking for Clown Corps content, I beg of you to go check out clowncorps.net to join me in crime-fighting clown college hell.<br/>(You can also go to http://clowncorps.net/comic/chapter-one-cover/ to start at the beginning lol)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Bout stared up at the ceiling fan as it spun ineffectively, barely stirring a breeze in the stiflingly humid, warm air. They’d gotten once last heatwave before the weather would hopefully be convinced that it was Autumn and time for cooler weather. And he couldn’t sleep because of it.</p><p>Instead, he found himself ruminating on his life.</p><p>Coming to clown college had been… well it was a major life change, to be sure. Moving away from home for the first time, cafeteria food constantly, calling his dad instead of just walking down to talk with him over breakfast.</p><p>It wasn’t bad, just still too new to not be strange. He’d been adapting pretty well, in his opinion. And he’d been doing well, in classes. He had finally gotten a real taste of what it took to be a clown, besides just listening to his dad and trying to follow his example and was more certain than ever that this was what he wanted. The only thing he still wasn’t that certain of was the social thing. All of his relationships with his classmates were brand new.</p><p>Ollie was a bit of a character, even for a clown, but he seemed to have picked Bout as some sort of goal to reach, if the way the skater practically followed him around the gym during some of his workouts.</p><p>PJ was pretty chill, understandably. A nice guy who didn’t need to say much to get you to like him. Which was probably a good thing, since he had a tendency to fall asleep partway through most conversations. Good balance too, to never fall over while sleeping.</p><p>Then there was, of course, their class’s Four Fast Friends. Who’d seemingly gravitated towards each other within a few hours of their first day. Fuchsia, Honeypot, and Ragdoll had apparently met during the exam, but they hadn’t had time to make friends more than anyone else had. But the four of them were friendly to anyone, and all unorthodox in their clowning in the most efficient manner Bout had seen from anyone in the school, instead of chafing. You couldn’t help but notice them and be drawn to them at least one of them a little bit.</p><p>Hell, he’d had a crush on Fuchsia just from seeing a bit of her in the entrance exam and then the first day. She was smart and cheerful and helpful and just so bright. And pretty, both in smile and style and Bout wasn’t going to deny that, even now that he was basically over her.</p><p>Honeypot, meanwhile, was almost as bright as Fuchsia, but much more hyper. She was always buzzing around like the bees she’d designed her persona after. And she combined really well with Ragdoll to always brighten a room and make others laugh. Ragdoll wasn’t as directly bright or hyper as Fuchsia and Honeypot, but they had a smooth gentle way of making suggestions that energized others, and always led to the sort of fun his dad would call “mischief”.</p><p>The three of them were beacons to the whole class, even without needing to be close to everyone, the whole group just inspired the aspiring clowns to be better clowns. Kind of the whole group. Everyone who interacted with the fourth member of the group had some kind of fondness for her, it seemed, but McBell wasn’t exactly cheery like the rest, or a paragon of up-and-coming clownness.</p><p>McBell was… McBell. That might have been the best way he had to describe her.</p><p>Except, no. He could do better. Just because she was more complicated than most people, and people were always more complicated than fighting styles, didn’t mean that she was unobservable, unanalyzable.</p><p>She was mysterious, both in the sense that she purposefully didn’t want people to know her and that she always seemed to march to the beat of her own drum. Her jokes and comments were cryptic and meta and made no sense half the time except they made perfect sense; they just weren’t understandable. Which was a contradiction. Which suited McBell perfectly.</p><p>McBell was aloof and didn’t care about people, except she always cared and was always willing to help. She didn’t really want to be at clown college (which was just another mystery. How does one who didn’t even want the clown life end up at the one place that practically guarantees that life?) but gave her all in everything. She had some of the best integrity Bout had ever seen, perhaps almost as much as his dad, but was a self-proclaimed cheater who… well, she certainly knew how to skirt the rules. She was the most stubborn person Bout had ever met but one of her defining characteristics was her adaptability (if something like that could be considered to make her “definable”).</p><p>It really was quite admirable… <em>McBell</em> was quite admirable. Strong in spirit, for all she didn’t seem to have anywhere to direct that spirit. Unlike him though, even without a purpose she moved through the world without doubt. She wasn’t suicidally careless, or self-sacrificing certainly. And it wasn’t quite reckless. Not even during their match. McBell hadn’t been reckless during that. But she’d been intense, driven, unflinching, <em>determined</em>. And she had been completely apologetic about it, even if her behavior had been the sort that other people would never dare show. McBell was a rebel in the most admirable sense of the word.</p><p>His dad’s words came to mind, unbidden: “Fall for a rebel and you’ll just become another thing to rebel against.”</p><p>Oh.</p><p>
  <em>Oh.</em>
</p><p>Oh no.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Hope y'all enjoyed enough to stay. A circus of one isn't a very good show, after all ;)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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